


In the Dark Season

by Wasuremono



Category: Nested (Browser Game)
Genre: F/M, Present Tense, Procedural Generation Interpretation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:38:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three views on a catastrophe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dark Season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dizmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizmo/gifts).



The sky is dark and dull, and the last of Rising Sorrow's comforts have been taken from her. Before the clouds came, she could find solace even on her worst days in following the sun or counting the stars, but for many days now, the dark clouds have blocked out even the sun. It is the spirits, she knows -- another curse on her life. And to think the year was going well...

Rising Sorrow steps forward to poke at the fire, and Timid Day's gaze meets her eyes across it. "Do you think it's getting better, Sorrow? The clouds seem thinner today. Do you think the sacrifice worked?" Her eyes are so hopeful that Rising Sorrow doesn't want to answer her truly, because of course she doesn't think it worked. What has their worthless shaman ever done for them?

Before Rising Sorrow can answer, Timid Day's mate reaches for her, sitting up and smiling even as moving makes him wince. Deep Mammoth is a strong man, thankfully, even with his wound still healing. "You know it'll be all right, Day. The sun is just past the hills; if I were well, I'd go searching to bring it home to you."

"Mammoth, you know the shaman says you shouldn't sit up!" Timid Day eases him back down, and Rising Sorrow takes his place opposite them. "Your sister'll be angry when she gets home if you've opened yourself up again." 

"It's fine, Day, it's fine. I'm fine. Don't worry." Mammoth lowers himself down onto the bed he's made of his coat. "Sorrow, you're the sky-watcher. What do you think of all of this?"

Rising Sorrow looks up, and she thinks nothing. These days will not pass; it is surely the end. She shrugs. "I don't know. Ask Thirsty Ocean if you want omens." 

Inside the tent closest to the fire, Thirsty Ocean hears her name called. She looks up from her work, resting a hand on her patient, and he grunts. "Ocean, be careful -- it's still sore --"

"I know. It'll be sore for a while, but it's mending." It isn't mending nearly quickly enough, but Thirsty Ocean has no desire to tell her mate this. His complaints are bad enough as it is. She reaches for a bundle of dried plants and breaks off a few leaves. "Chew these." Sweet Sky does, obedient as ever, and Thirsty Ocean lies down next to him. For a moment, she thinks of stepping outside to ask the watchers what they want from her, and then she decides not to, because what can she tell them? She doesn't know where the sun is hiding, why the clouds have come down, any more than they do. It's all she can do to lead the sacrifices, tend to wounded hunters, and hope.

"I know it's bad, Ocean," says Sky, voice already going softer thanks to the effects of the pain-killing plant. "This dark season is awful, and I don't know what we can do. I promise you I'll do my best, though. I want to live -- I want for all of us to live. You, me, the child." As if to answer, the child inside Thirsty Ocean stirs, slow but strong; this one, Ocean thinks, might live. If she is lucky, she and Sweet Sky might too. 

"Good," Thirsty Ocean says. "Just be strong. The spirits will forgive you soon." She may need to ask them again; who knows whether they can hear her or not through the clouds? But she will try, and Sky will try, and the child will grow, and the watchers of the tribe will watch. Together, they may survive this season.

* * *

"It's the liches. It's got to be the liches."

Juliana Redrain has already had this conversation five times this week, and she's not eager to have it again. She rises from her desk -- a mistake, she realizes, as the poor weather has made her old broken knee ache terribly when she attempts to put weight on it. Back to the desk it is. "Nicholas," she says, irritation more evident in her voice than she might like, "is this even the sort of thing liches do?" 

"It's not beyond them," replies Nicholas from his workbench. "The heat isn't quite what they're fond of, but the darkness certainly suits them well, and if this weather keeps up through summer, they'll destroy the crop yields. We can't afford to lose those crops, Julia! The dark armies wll be upon us when we're starving and defenseless!"

Juliana is not the dark-magic expert in the household, so she can't say for sure whether or not liches have armies, but some part of the theory doesn't quite play for her. Perhaps it's the theoretical training from her time at the Academy that makes her doubt the efficacy of this as a long-term plan for crop-ruining. Crop ruination is one of the simplest applications of dark magic, and liches are supposed to be peerless at dark magic, so why would they go for something so crude as the ashen clouds above them? It's simply not sensible. Then again, judging by Nicholas, dark magicians aren't a sensible lot. Every year with Nicholas strengthens Juliana's gratitude that she went into a practical subject. 

"Well, if that's true," she says, "what can we do about it? Is there anything to be done? If there isn't... well, I'm sorry, Nicholas, but I'd rather just go on. There's no use dwelling on fatalism." 

"I'm hoping there are countermeasures. Juliana, come see this?"

Juliana rises again (more careful on her knee this time) and walks across the room to Nicholas's workbench. He's standing over a glass cylinder full of murky fluid, and for the first time she sees what's inside -- the faintly glowing shape of a larval angel, unfledged wings pulled tight around its half-formed, lumpen body. Nicholas is holding a chunk of something damp and red, and he's flaking it into powder into the broth that surrounds the larva. "Congealed troll blood," he says, before she can ask. "We've managed growth, but I intend fortification. We'll need a protector when the lich armies come."

Juliana doesn't answer; she can't. Her first impulse is to flee the tower entirely, flee to her workshop downtown where she can engage in some proper augury with her gem-spirits, something that might make sense of this awful situation. Didn't Erasmus in the Geomancy Department want to speak to her about the readings his field team had sent over from the Flame Continent? That's no more likely to be a comfort than whatever it is Nicholas is growing in that tube, but at least it would be objectively verifiable. And yet... it is Nicholas, after all. Even when he's at his most paranoid, Juliana can't forget the first taste of his lips, back when they were both apprentices and all the world was shimmering potential. The spirits told her then to follow him even into the Dark World, and she has. Is now any time to stop?

"It's... it's quite an idea, Nicholas. What more needs to be done?"

"Mostly it needs time -- time I pray we have. I'm about to start the last few preparatory steps. Which reminds me -- bring me the sack of dead mice from my supply coffer, will you? This next step is very time-sensitive."

* * *

Gogrernt spots the aberrant atmospheric activity on the inner planet on the final segment of her courier mission across the belt. That close to the sun, the inner planet reflects painfully on her photoreceptors, and the dark plume in the atmosphere creates a contrast unmissable even at standard courier-run distance. 

"Fjbcanu cqrwp'b xw cqn kurwt," she subvocalizes to herself as she fiddles with her sensor array. When the anomaly resolves itself as authentic and not an artifact of her aging ship, she twitches her wing reflexively and engages her recorder. "Lxdarna Bnlxwm Lujbb Gogrernt anlxamrwp jcvxbyqnarl jkwxavjurch rw Vnpj-Xksnlc Yujwnc Cqann. Ljdbn dwlunja. Mjcj anlxamnm oxa dbn xo Yujwncjah Jwjuhcrlb Lxayb." One wingtip reaches to hit the engine kill button -- this will require an extended observation. 

Three day-night cycles pass, and Gogrernt observes, moving only to ablute her stinger. What she sees, she does not understand; she is, after all, only a courier, and data analytics are not her duty. The planet is a dark place, with no electromagnetic signals that might represent the presence of civilized life, although her varioradiant sensors indicate some level of high-band energy is being released from the planet. Whatever that energy may be intended to do, she cannot say, because the black cloud in the atmosphere barely moves during the observation period. 

After three days, it is no longer Gogrernt's duty, and she moves on to finish her mission. The analysts back at home will hopefully appreciate her data, but she hopes they won't send her on a follow-up survey. Those huge planets are no place for a sensible ashnesisk, and she's grateful to soon be home in the belt, under the atmosphere-retention domes. Maybe she can manage a post on the home cluster for the next few duty cycles? She's never much cared for xenolife observations. Too detached -- too speculative -- too strange...

Gogrernt sets her controls to autopilot and tucks in her wings and pseudolimb for the flight. It's always nice to be on the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! Thanks for your prompt; I really enjoyed playing with Nested and discovering the seeds of narrative there. If you're curious what raw material I used, I created [an Imgur gallery](http://imgur.com/a/LeX4B) of the Nested screenshots that inspired the story. 
> 
> (Apologies for the ciphertext, by the way, but it seemed in the spirit of the original "thoughts" section.)


End file.
